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Eighteen-year-old Courtney Amos had her heart set on the Ivy League. By the end of an official visit to Yale University in September, the five-star recruit from Tucson, Arizona, had found her college home.

"Academics are a huge thing for me, as well as tennis, and Yale has both of those," said the affable Amos, a senior at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson. "I loved the campus. The curriculum suited me probably the best out of all the schools I looked at. The girls I'm going in with are so nice - the whole team is just really great. And the coaches are really good too. It's just like the perfect place for me."

Santa Clara became a point of reference for Amos as she weighed her decision to leave her lifelong home in Arizona and spend four years on the wintry East Coast.

"I was looking at Santa Clara to compare a West Coast school to an East Coast school," she said. "I just wanted to make sure that I wanted to go East. I really liked the coach and all the girls at Santa Clara, too."

The decision was made even more difficult by an unofficial visit to Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, and then, a week after her September sojourn to Yale, an official visit to Brown in Providence, Rhode Island.

"Brown was great, too," said Amos. "The team was really, really nice, and the coach is a great coach."

She reached her decision after comparing and contrasting the curriculum offered by the two venerable schools.

"Brown has the open curriculum and you can do any class you want," she said. "I'm a structured person when it comes to that, and I think that Yale was just better for me all-around."

In Amos, Bulldogs Head Coach Danielle Lund McNamara and Assistant Coach Christian Thompson are getting a proven winner with a game built on solid ground strokes and a powerful serve. Her preferred style of play is to patrol the baseline and wear down opponents with her consistent backcourt play, while winning free points with her first serve and creating openings with a kick second serve.

But, she hastened to add, "I'm working on becoming a better volleyer and just a better all-around player."